


Even Now

by helena_s_renn



Category: Def Leppard, Music RPF
Genre: Other, The Def Leppard curse, meet and greet, playing the Steve card again, sequence of events may not be historically accurate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-12 00:16:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15983531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helena_s_renn/pseuds/helena_s_renn
Summary: Phil has an unexpected flashback during a meet-and-greet.





	Even Now

**Author's Note:**

> As always this is fiction. At least, what Phil's spacing out about is fiction. 
> 
> No disrespect to any present or past member of Def Leppard intended. 
> 
> I make no claims as to Phil's real feelings, opinions and thoughts.
> 
> Unbeta'd, any mistakes are mine.

She was so fucking eager. Wearing nice but not custom-made clothes, probably bought special for this occasion. Twangy, nasal accent. Didn't laugh, giggle, barely smiled (no tears, thank fuck) but an experienced hand like me could tell. It might have been the flared nostrils, or the constant fiddling with her jewelry. Yeah, I could almost smell it on her, she wanted... well, if not me, then someone. Looking at the dark roots of her bleached-blonde hair, I had a fairly good idea.

By the time we're eighty, they may stop salivating.

Like so many of the women in this part of the world, she'd let herself go, to be polite. Maybe it's the long, cold winters and the lack of anything interesting to do, I don't know, but they're such cows. I thought of my tall, dark beauty back home, a miracle that defied the Curse, and our perfect child. Soon she'd be back in top form.

Did the woman peering at me expectantly have kids? A disembodied thought, that she'd have held the responsibility for other people's lives. No wedding ring, but that could have meant many things: divorced, separated, there on a hall pass (good luck with that!), or the metal band was too small to fit on those pudgy fingers now. She had visible tattoos, probably considered herself a liberal, a rebel. There'd been twenty or so of the same ilk through the line already, the worst directly before. There'd be more. The only bird with a tight little body to be seen was a slutty blonde in a fringed dress straight out of a Bond classic and a seriously bad case of 80's hair. During the photo op, she had flung her arms everywhere, across my crotch and almost up Joe's nose in a 'pose' that only revealed she's no dancer. Jesus, I'd thought at the time, is this the best this place has to offer? 

This first one, when viewed up close, went slightly cross-eyed in her enthusiasm. I humoured her for thirty seconds. What was she on about? Oh right, she saw me live with one of my sidelines. That was the one where the bus could not find purchase on the road for miles, and the driver could barely see anything beyond the white swirls of epic death. In that city. That one. It had been almost thirty years since they pulled him out of the gutter there, the actual gutter. Afraid we'd lost him then, we all flew in from where ever, certain we'd be accompanying a body home.

Pale and small, that's how he looked with all those tubes and wires trailing off him, in a hospital bed, tucked into starched, stark white sheets. No bigger than, well, me, and so fragile a person could have snapped him like a twig. In the time I'd known him, Steve had never looked young, not even asleep.

What was I even doing back then, that had become more important than him? Right, waiting for my first kid to be born, not my fourth. I'd been torn, it's easier to forget that and shift the blame. No, I would not trade a life for a life, not like that. I'm grateful that it's not up to me. But it struck me, how many of these ubiquitous ugly chicks equals one Steve? Ten? Twenty? More like two-and-a-half of him would have made one of her. There's no such thing as equal, no equation. Apples and oranges.

When I came back into my body in that moment, I was staring away, up, up at the heavens through the darkened room's high ceiling. If anyone deserved to have flown to such a place, it was him, of all of us. He was such a child, little boy lost. The appetites of a grown man confused him; he couldn't moderate any of them. Always all or nothing. Speaking of appetites, this one in front of me with her smile faded and head down like she'd done something very wrong, no you didn't honey, it's me not you, poor thing. I can't even talk to Debbi about this, and we've both checked out. Move along now.

When we accompanied him back to the UK, I said I never wanted to return to that place. That city. And yet we do, almost every tour. Do I stand on the stages of those venues there, different ones than in the 80's admittedly, in the presence of a ghost? Honestly, no, not anymore. Because, they've torn those down, as did we, built anew upon our old foundations. It used to feel like we were stomping on his grave, the direction we took wasn't how he'd have done things.

That's what you get, Steve, Steamin' Steve, riffmaster, for abandoning us to face grunge and boy bands without you. It took us as long as you lived to get back to where we were, but at least we did. Even if we have to sell ourselves like painted whores for five-minute increments to do it. They love it. They'd have loved you wrinkled and grey, voice like sandpaper. Maybe you'd have got fat, too, in your old age. 

More flashes go off in my face. I can't smile.

Fin.


End file.
